Pretoria – The Justice Department has no right to interfere in the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, the commission was told on Friday.

“It is unfortunate and inappropriate as they are not parties in the commission,” said Dali Mpofu, for miners arrested and wounded during the unrest at Lonmin’s platinum mine at Marikana last year.
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Survivors and families of the victims of the Marikana massacre will march to the Union Buildings next week because of the government’s refusal to pay their legal fees at the Farlam Commission.

The march is scheduled for September 12 – the day on which Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko was killed by the apartheid regime exactly 36 years ago.

South African Council of Churches president Jo Seoka, who testified at the commission, is the convener of the march.
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Johannesburg – The body of a 14-year-old girl was found on Monday in a field in Thombo location, Port St Johns, said Eastern Cape police.

The girl was discovered at 13:30 by a passer-by, who then alerted the police, spokesperson Mduduzi Godlwana said.

“The victim had marks on her neck, which are believed to have been from strangling,” he said.

The girl had not yet been identified.

A rape and murder docket had been opened.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – A 53-year-old man was jailed for eight years by the Mahikeng Regional Court on Monday for raping a woman, North West police said.

The man raped a 50-year-old woman in Itsoseng Township, near Lichtenburg, in 2011, said police spokesperson Pelonomi Makau.

The man learnt that the woman was a dressmaker and asked her to accompany him to his house to stitch his trousers.

When they got there, he raped her.

– SAPA

Cape Town – Oil from the cargo ship that ran aground off Buffels Bay near Knysna a month ago did not enter the Swartvlei Estuary, a SA National Parks (SANParks) official said on Monday.

Garden Route National Park spokesperson Nandi Mgwadlamba said sandbags were used to partially close the estuary after the Kiani Satu ran aground on 8 August, preventing oil from entering.

She said the sandbags were now being removed.

This was an “incredibly challenging task” because some of them were deeply buried and would surface only with time.

“However, a concerted effort will be made to ensure that as many of the sandbags as possible are removed.”

After it ran aground, the captain and 19-member crew of the Kiani Satu were forced to abandon ship.

The vessel reportedly suffered an engine breakdown in heavy seas while carrying 330 tons of fuel oil and 15 000 tons of rice.

The SA Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) pumped the fuel oil from the ship’s engine room to higher parts of the vessel and flew it off the ship in plastic tanks.

Samsa later towed the Kiani Satu out to sea. It sank three weeks ago in 1 000m of water, 110 nautical miles south of Buffels Bay.

Mgwadlamba said the reopening of the estuary mouth and the restoration of the channel to the same dimensions as prior to the artificial closure, were improbable.

SANParks scientist Dr Ian Russell said the estuary was just over a metre above mean sea level, significantly reducing the chance of breaching.

However, reports that the estuary would be damaged if it were to remain closed and breach only when the water level reached two metres above mean sea level, were unfounded.

“This is a naturally open/closed system where such variability in mouth state and water height is natural. In fact, these extremes have been significantly suppressed by man’s alteration of the system,” he said.

“If the estuary were to remain closed now, and for a period forward, then yes, recruitment opportunities for marine fish and some estuarine invertebrates could be temporarily altered.”

An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of water that is either permanently or periodically open to the sea, and which contains a mixture of seawater and freshwater.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – Door-to-door campaigns held in five Tlokwe wards on Monday helped the ANC’s national working committee (NWC) understand the community’s concerns, the party said on Monday.

“In all these wards the leadership was well-received except in one area where the level of dissatisfaction was visible, and we have promised people in that ward to return and deal with their grievances,” ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said in a statement.

“We believe that we are gradually reversing the negativity that characterised the situation in Tlokwe,” he said.

Members of the ANC’s NWC were deployed to wards in Tlokwe to campaign ahead of next week’s by-elections.

Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor and Mthembu were sent to Ward 4, Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane to Ward 13, ANC chair Baleka Mbete and Deputy Minister in the Presidency Obed Bapela to Ward 18, ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa to Ward 26, and Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom to Ward 12.

By-elections will be held on 18 September in Tlokwe, in Wards 1, 4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 18, 20 and 26.

The wards, which were previously represented by the ANC, became vacant when it expelled the councillors.

Expelled councillors

In July, the ANC expelled 14 councillors after its provincial disciplinary committee found them guilty on four counts of misconduct for participating in a motion of no confidence against Tlokwe mayor Maphetle Maphetle.

Maphetle was replaced by DA Councillor Annette Combrink.

However, the ANC’s national disciplinary committee overturned the expulsions.

Despite this, eight of the councillors reportedly registered as independent candidates for the by-elections.

Mthembu said some of the previously expelled councillors were helping the ANC to win the council back.

He said the party was confident it would win all nine by-elections.

The ANC retained control of Ward 9 in Tlokwe, with 738 votes, in a by-election held last month. It was followed by independent candidate Khotso Ratikoane with 504 votes.

Last week, ANC Deputy Secretary General Jessie Duarte said the party was confident it would be able to “bring back” the North West to a “solid ANC”.

“Clearly there are issues around the mayor of Tlokwe and the ANC’s processes will be in place to deal with those issues,” she said.

“There have been mistakes made on all sides… and what we are trying to do is to find a way forward that will not only appease people but is the right thing to do.”

– SAPA

Johannesburg – The Constitutional Court will hear arguments on Tuesday relating to the awarding of a social grant tender, which was found to be invalid by a lower court.

The unsuccessful bidder, AllPay Consolidated Investment Holdings, argues the tender process was procedurally flawed and unfair, and violated sections of the Constitution.

The R10bn tender was awarded to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) for the administration of social grants over a five-year period.

The SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), which pays around R15m in social grants a month, initiated the tender process, aiming in part to address fraud and theft problems within its system.

A central issue in the tender was the provision of a system which could reliably identify the recipients of grants.

AllPay approached the North Gauteng High Court with various concerns about the tender process.

The court found in favour of AllPay, and ruled that the tender process did not comply with the requirements and was procedurally unfair.

The court declared the tender process invalid, but did not set the tender aside because it would have disrupted the delivery of social grants.

AllPay appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), which found in favour of Sassa and overturned the high court order.

The SCA held that a fair process did not demand perfection in every step, nor could a tender be set aside for inconsequential irregularities.

In the Constitutional Court, AllPay wants the SCA’s decision set aside.

– SAPA

Hammanskraal – An Mpumalanga primary school principal was jailed for in effect 12 years on Monday, for murdering her former gardener on suspicion of stealing money and jewellery from her house.

The North West High Court, sitting in the Temba Magistrate’s Court, in Hammanskraal, had found Pinky Magalefa, 56, guilty of kidnapping and intentionally murdering Johannes Moseta, who was also her neighbour, in 2010, a Sapa correspondent reported.

Magalefa was the headmistress of Nkotolane Primary School in Mmametlhake village near KwaMhlanga.

“After returning from work, Magalefa realised that her house had been broken into and that jewellery and R800 in cash had been stolen,” Mmametlhake police spokesperson Hastings Chaane told African Eye News Service on Monday.

“She insisted that the deceased [Moseta] had a hand in the break-in and hired three young men to search for him.”

Chaane said the three men found Moseta in Pretoria, about 80km from the village.

“They bound his hands and feet together with a rope and drove with him back to Mmametlhake. There, with an instruction of Magalefa, they took him to the bushes and beat him to a pulp.”

Chaane said police arrived to find Moseta’s motionless body in a pool of blood.

“We rushed him to the local hospital, but he was certified dead on arrival at the facility,” said Chaane.

In handing down judgment, Judge Festus Gura said it was clear Magalefa had intended to kill Moseta.

He found the three men Magalefa hired to search for Moseta were not guilty, and said there was no evidence that they were involved in the murder.

The judge sentenced Magalefa to 12 years for murder and three years for kidnapping.

The sentences would run concurrently.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – The burning of Karabo FM, a community radio station in Sasolburg, in the Free State, was an attack on the democratic principles of South Africa, the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) said on Monday.

“This tragic incident is yet another reminder that, almost 20 years into democracy, the right to freedom of expression and specifically media freedom still needs to be protected and advanced,” it said in a statement.

“The… institute adds that such attacks should be treated not just as an attack on media freedom, but an attack on the foundations of South Africa’s constitutional democracy.”

According to the station’s board chairperson Sam Mkhwanazi, it was deliberately burnt down by two unidentified men on Saturday.

“Two armed men, covering their faces, went into the studio carrying 25l of petrol. They sprinkled it around and set the place alight on Saturday night,” he said at the weekend.

The two ordered the presenter out of the studio before setting the building on fire at 21:00.

“We do not know why they burnt [down] the station. The whole building has been destroyed. Our hard work of five years was destroyed in two minutes.”

He said the station had a normal relationship with residents in Sasolburg, and he could not understand why people had burnt it down.

“People loved the station. It is a great loss to us,” he said.

He hoped police would speedily investigate the cause of the fire.

Mkhwanazi encouraged the community of Sasolburg and the surrounding areas to work with them to provide information which would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators.

Local conflict

The FXI said Karabo FM was “in the middle of the local conflict” around plans to merge Parys and Sasolburg.

“With several outbreaks of violence over the past months, Karabo FM has remained a medium that sought to maintain some independence.”

In August, the Municipal Demarcation Board decided to drop a merger between the Metsimaholo and Ngwathe municipalities in the Free State.

In January, four people were killed, several were injured and hundreds were arrested during protests against the proposed merger. Several cars were set alight and government buildings were damaged in Sasolburg’s Zamdela township.

The University of Witwatersrand’s radio academy director Franz Kruger said in the FXI statement that the attack illustrated the state of media freedom at the local level.

“This is an appalling attack on media freedom, committed with great impunity, and highlights the extent to which media freedom at local level is far from guaranteed”.

Earlier on Monday the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) expressed sadness at the fire.

“The MDDA is saddened by this incident, as it has deprived the community of an essential information asset which kept the community informed and entertained at all times,” CEO Lumko Mtimde said in a statement.

– SAPA

Pretoria – Lawyers representing the miners wounded and arrested during labour-related unrest at Marikana are disappointed at the decision not to postpone the public hearings of the Farlam Commission of Inquiry.

The miners would view the decision as unfair, said their attorney Andries Nkome.

Commission chairperson, retired judge Ian Farlam, ruled on Monday that it would not be prejudicial to the miners wounded and arrested at Marikana last year to continue the hearings.

The application to defer the hearings was brought by Dali Mpofu, who also represents the arrested and wounded miners.

‘Not fair’

Mpofu and other lawyers have provisionally withdrawn from the commission while he continues to seek funding.

“Our clients understand that every day this commission continues half a million rand of their money is being spent to run the commission. It is not fair,” Nkome told reporters outside the auditorium in Centurion where the commission is sitting.

“The so-called victims of the [Marikana] massacre are not participating in the commission. Our clients were not here today, I think they had anticipated the ruling would be against them,” he said.

Nkome said he anticipated that his clients would not receive the commission’s decision well.

“Our clients see this commission to be running only with the parties which seem to be the perpetrators of the injustices. Obviously, they would not be feeling well,” he said.

The commission’s evidence leaders have been representing his clients.

Claim rejected

On Friday, Mpofu took a swipe at the evidence leaders, claiming they were on the justice department’s pay-roll.

However, the evidence leaders’ head, Geoff Budlender, rejected Mpofu’s claim.

The commission, which is sitting at the Tshwane council chamber, is investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing of 44 people during strike-related unrest at Lonmin’s Marikana operations near Rustenburg, in North West.

Police shot dead 34 people – almost all striking mineworkers – while trying to disperse them on 16 August 2012. Ten other people, including two police officers and two security guards, were killed in the preceding week.

The commission was appointed by President Jacob Zuma shortly after the unrest.

– SAPA